Fall 2001
This syllabus is subject to change at the instructor's discretion. The current syllabus can always be found at http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~heflin/courses/sw-fall01/
12/5/2001 - The due date for the final project has been extended to 5pm Friday, Dec. 14!
| Professor: | Jeff Heflin |
| E-mail: | heflin@cse.lehigh.edu |
| Office: | 330 Packard Lab |
| Office Hours: | M 10-11am, W 10-11am, Th 3-4pm, and by appointment |
| Phone: | 610-758-6533 |
| Web Page: | http://www.eecs.lehigh.edu/~heflin/ |
The Internet is on the verge of another revolution. The development of the World Wide Web made the Internet accessible to millions by making it easy for anyone to publish and access documents on the Internet. However, the explosive growth of the Web has led to the problem of information overload. Researchers from industry and academia are now exploring the possibility of creating a "Semantic Web," in which meaning is made explicit, allowing machines to process and integrate Web resources intelligently. Beyond enabling quick and accurate web search, this technology may also allow the development of intelligent internet agents and facilitate communication between a multitude of heterogeneous web-accessible devices. In this class, we will examine this exciting area by reading and discussing both existing web specifications and cutting-edge research papers. Topics will include World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF), as well as proposed standards such as the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML).
Each student must complete a project of his or her choice (subject to the professor's approval). The project may either be a paper on some topic related to the Semantic Web or can be the development of software that demonstrates a capability of the Semantic Web. The project will be graded in three parts. In October, students must submit a written proposal for the their project. This proposal will be 2-4 pages. In November,students must submit a 2-6 page project progress report. This report will describe what has been completed so far. The completed project is due on the last day of class.
| Project proposal | 10% |
| Project progress report | 20% |
| Project | 40% |
| Homework | 10% |
| Class participation | 20% |
This schedule is subject to change as the class progresses. Check back to determine assignments for upcoming weeks.
Each reading assignment is linked to an on-line version of the document. Usually this is in HTML or PDF format, although a few papers are in PostScript or Compressed PostScript format. Also, each reading assignment is followed by a reference (in brackets) that links to the complete citation for the paper. The citations for the entire reading list can be found here.